TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

Though the effects of the recession still linger, 2010 was a year of slow recovery for the venture capital industry - and 2011 should be even better, according to an annual report from law firm Cooley. The overall deal volume in 2010 reached 407 deals, a level not seen over the last five years. And, aggregate dollars invested - $4.6 billion - eclipsed levels seen in the years following the recession.

"The slow but steady growth we saw in 2010, and the continued growth thus far in 2011, leads us to be optimistic about financing trends continuing to improve," said Craig Jacoby, head of Cooley's Emerging Companies practice.

TechFlash reported in the first quarter of 2010 that the number of up rounds - venture capital deals completed at a higher valuation than the previous round - had increased to 58 percent of all deals. That trend continued, with an overall increase in the percentage of up rounds over 2009, and a significant increase in the fourth quarter when 72 percent of all fourth quarter financings were up rounds.

A screenshot from the Bellevue-produced Sony Online Entertainment game, "The Agency."

Sony Online Entertainment is closing its game-development studios in Bellevue, Denver and Tucson, Ariz., and cutting 205 positions across the three markets.

Surgeon Jim Porter wanted to show off the advanced skills of Swedish Medical Center’s precision surgical robotic device. So he made YouTube videos of the robot doing some non-surgical things.

Like making and flying a tiny paper airplane. And giving his daughter a manicure.

Microsoft is said to be working on technology to allow shoppers to pay for groceries and other purchases by waving their Windows Phone device at the checkout counter.

Seattle startup Swype received $3.5 million in a round of funding led by venture capital firm Ignition Partners.

Ignition's investment is the first in a larger round of funding expected to close in the next few weeks, said CEO Mike McSherry to GeekWire, who first reported the news yesterday.

The heavily funded Seattle company has received a lot of attention for its text input technology for touch screens, which allows users to type much faster than on normal virtual keyboards. (In the last year there have been multiple attempts using Swype to set the world record for fastest text message. So far, the winner is a British woman with a time of 25.94 seconds.)

Amazon’s “All Hands” meeting today at Seattle’s KeyArena has a Star Trek theme. No surprise there. CEO Jeff Bezos is a longtime “Star Trek” fan and says he does a “mean interpretation” of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise. And Bezos also has his space flight project, Blue Origin.

Amazon.com recently leased 460,000 square feet in the 1918 Building in Seattle. (Dan Schlatter/PSBJ)

Amazon.com, Isilon Systems and Zillow.com have led the charge on leasing new office space in Seattle so far in 2011.

Nearly one million square feet of office space in downtown Seattle was leased in the first quarter, according to a new report from the real estate services firm Kidder Mathews.

The first quarter included one of the largest office leases yet signed in the Puget Sound area: Amazon.com’s lease of 460,000 square feet of space in the 1918 Building. Other big Q1 deals included Dendreon’s lease of approximately 180,000 square feet in the Russell Investments Center, Isilon Systems’ lease of 140,000 square feet in the 505 First Ave. South Building and Zillow.com’s lease of 66,000 square feet in the Russell building.

Zillow.com now has an app for the BlackBerry. The company announced this morning that it was adding the BlackBerry app to a lineup that includes ones for the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Mobile.

The Seattle online real estate company said demand for the app was high among Blackberry-loving real estate professionals.

"Many of our fans – including significant numbers of real estate professionals – have asked us to bring our transformative mobile experience to the BlackBerry platform, and we're thrilled to give them this option today," said CEO Spencer Rascoff.

Visible Technologies said today it has raised $6 million in a new funding round.

The round was led by previous backers of the Bellevue-based company, including Growth Capital, Centurion Holdings, Ignition Partners, In-Q-Tel and WPP.

The social media monitoring company plans to use the funding for sales and to develop its global presence (it currently has offices in Seattle, New York and London). The company provides businesses with a 360 view of their social sphere by aggregating social media from multiple sources, and helps them make use of the chatter by transforming it into actionable marketing and business strategy.

Visible Technologies launched its Visible Intelligence platform in October of last year and CEO Kelly Pennock said the company has more than doubled quarter-over-quarter sales since.

Here's what one of Visible Technologies' investors had to say:

Much of the attention surrounding Paul Allen’s new memoir has focused on explosive accusations that Bill Gates schemed to dilute Allen’s stake in Microsoft after Allen was slowed by cancer.

But what about Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer? What is Allen’s beef with him?

In excerpts from Allen’s memoir, “Idea Man” published in Vanity Fair, Allen writes that in 1982 he overheard Ballmer and Gates complaining about Allen’s low productivity. Allen writes Ballmer and Gates also were discussing ways to whittle down Allen’s equity state in the company:

Microsoft has filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission accusing rival Google of violated European competition laws by “walling off” access to data that search engines like Bing need to provide results for users and advertisers.

The stakes for Microsoft are high in Europe where Google has about 95 percent of the search market and where Microsoft’s Bing is having a tough time making a dent.

VentureBeat points out that Microsoft is no stranger to regulator scrutiny. And VentureBeat says the antitrust complaint is a sign that Microsoft cannot compete with Google’s search technology. If that’s true, it doesn’t bode well for Microsoft’s plans to make more gains in the U.S. from Google, which has about 70 percent of U.S. searches.

The competition between Bing and Google has been intense. In February, Google accused Microsoft of artificially tuning its Bing search engine to mimic Google’s algorithm.

And now the battle has heated up more across the pond.

Microsoft recently helped bring down Rustock, a notorious international botnet responsible for sending nearly 14 billion spam messages a day with pitches to sell Viagra and other prescription drugs. But just what impact did that have on stopping spam and viruses?

Quite a bit it turns out, at least for now.

Mobile game startup Z2Live's latest venture round is worth $2.5 million, bringing total funding for the company up to approximately $6.5 million.

Amid the hubbub of the group-buying market, a Bellevue-based startup has struck out with a refreshing new model: a daily deals site that is good for businesses, great for consumers and even better for communities.

Kudos Community launched yesterday and, like Living Social, Groupon and others, the site offers a series of daily deals for Seattle restaurants, stores and treatments. However, it differs from its competitors in the transaction - Kudos offers the deal in coupon form so the transaction takes place between the customer and the business (rather than the deal site and the customer).

"(Groupon and Living Social) provide what turns out to be a gift card," said co-founder and president Carl Lombardi Jr. "(With Kudos), there's no transaction on site between the community member and the establishment - the transaction actually happens at the business."

The savings are similar to those with other daily deals sites (for example, today's featured deal is $50 of value for $20 at the BluWater Bistro), but members reserve the coupon and print it out, rather than paying up front. A mobile app is in the works, slated for release at the end of 2011.

Much has been mentioned about the effect of daily deal sites on the businesses that participate. Instead of collecting revenue transaction - a la Groupon - Kudos generates revenue through a fee system that charges participating businesses four to 10 cents per member reached.

Who knew that Paul Allen and Bill Gates were the spatting John Lennon and Paul McCartney of the tech world?

Allen’s new memoir, “Idea Man,” lays bare some major rifts between the two guys who launched Microsoft, differences that played a role in Allen’s ultimate business breakup with Gates.

The book has not even been published, but it already has redefined what we thought we knew about their relationship and made many Microsoft insiders wonder what motivated Allen to write so harshly about Gates.